You all know by now that I joined a roller derby league in my home town of Newcastle, aptly named Newcastle Roller Girls (NRG for short, natch) and you probably also know that roller derby is freaking awesome.

Our league is big and beautiful, with around 80 skaters on the books, an A Team, a B team and a full competitive Intraleague of skaters, we’re a proper professional outfit innit.

Now here’s where it gets serious, our A Team, The Canny Belters are so goddamn aces at what they do, in order to up their game as it were, they need to head out to the States, face some stiff competition and hopefully bring home some hardware.

For the first time ever, Newcastle Roller Girls will be sending the A Team Stateside to compete at the fantastically named Beach Brawl. The tournament takes place in my old stomping ground, Miami, Florida May 13th – 15th 2016 and in order to get them there, we need your help……

I know how amazing you all are at getting behind local causes and given the success of the national #ThisGirlCan campaign, I also know you know a golden opportunity when you see one. I’d love for you to back the Newcastle Roller Girls on their latest mission and get behind their latest campaign to raise funds for Beach Brawl (sounds better the more you say it).

So, what do we need? Well, in short we need £15,400 to cover all costs associated with getting our gals to this international event. You may or may not know that roller derby is run on a volunteer-non-profit basis so we need as much help as possible. Although skaters will each make a contribution towards their travel, we want to send our strongest team to Beach Brawl. This means selecting based on athletic ability and not excluding talented skaters due to financial constraints. We want to take the best team, not the richest team. That means raising funds together as a team, and this Go Fund Me campaign is just one part of our Beach Brawl fundraising activities.

We’ve set up a Go Fund Me page where you can learn more about our team, their achievements and more importantly, what we’ll give you if you donate to our super worthy cause incase the overwhelming send of pride isn’t enough.

So, do it for the love of the game, for the feeling you get from supporting your home team, or because you see an opportunity to open some doors for a great group of girls, but please, just do it. For me.